Robin Hood by Joan Leininger -
vist her blog wwwjleininger.blogspot.com
Summer is the time when people get away for vacation and travel. I and my wife and 2 kids were fortunate to be able to spend a long weekend in the mountains of southern Poland in July. The weather was fantastic and anyway I love mountains in all weathers.
I've also spent many hours this summer traveling through reading. It was while I was reading Marco Polo's The Travels that I realized that the books I had read this summer, and the books on my 'to read' list, were nearly all travel related. This was completely unintended.
I started my summer with Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia, which I wrote about on my July 6th post. That was followed by Marco Polo and next up was Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
Yes, some of those are works of fiction. I include The Little Prince since much of that book is the Little Prince recounting his journey from asteroid to asteroid through the universe, meeting many characters, until he arrives on earth, where he travels further and meets more creatures: human, animal and vegetable.
I think that most any boy who's ever read Robinson Crusoe feels an adventurous desire to be cast up on a deserted isle with all the helpful tools that Crusoe rescued from his ship. It's ironic that the character of Crusoe feels hateful toward his island prison for much of his confinement there. The unromantic reality of being alone on a distant island is probably something closer to what Tom Hanks' character experienced in the movie Castaway.
As I write this, I'm finishing up Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. This 80 page book is a small gem. Stevenson had an eye for detail and human character - like any worthy writer, of course - and his tale of his willful little donkey, the peculiar French peasants he encounters and the dramatic scenery of the rugged, hilly Cevennes region of south-central France is a delightful page turner. The book has been in constant print since it was published in 1907.
Next on my list to read is Henry James' Italian Hours, recounting his various visits to Italy, which has also remained popular since it's publication in 1909.
I want to recommend again the fantastic website bookdepository.co.uk with their free books catalogue by Dodo Press. The works of any author are free to the public 70 years after he or she kicks the bucket. Dodo Press offers over 11,000 free books (and you can buy the paperback versions from them if you like). Thanks to Dodo Press and the Book Depository, I've been able to download and read some of the books mentioned in this post.
I've read other non-travel related books this summer, too. I particularly enjoyed Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, which I first read back in college. The character Bathsheba attracts the attentions and love (to a greater or lesser degree) of three men. She must suffer from her own missteps to mature and eventually give her heart to the one man most deserving of her love. What separates a Hardy love story from low-brow romance novels is the living depth of his characters and his poet's description of places and events. (Hardy was an architect before he turned to writing and also wrote first rate poetry.) His rendering of the scene where Gabriel and Bathsheba frantically work to save stacks of wheat from ruin by rain in a lightning storm is vivid. That's just one example from dozens I could cite.
Anyone who's read Hardy knows his novels are about as opposite to travel books as you can get! They all take place in one little corner of England, but that little corner of the world contains a large universe of characters and lives.
Come to think of it, the same can be said for any avid reader's armchair.
The House was Quiet and the World was Calm
by Wallace Stevens
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
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